Saturday, August 25, 2018

U.S. GOVERNMENT 'HIDES' $21 TRILLION IN SPENDING - Black Budgets, Classified Projects, and the Reality of the Pre-Existing Space Force

Freshly-minted dimes spill into a container before being counted and packaged at a mint in Colorado, U.S. Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg

The stories are plentiful. Tales of excessive, wasteful, and seemingly irrational government spending have been spun by corporate media for years. These reports have been delivered with little or no consequence or even reasoning as to why the U.S. government would spend so much money without knowing where those funds were going, and this has raised serious doubts among the American people.

The supposition that the U.S. government is a bumbling, irresponsible, forgetful, and incompetent entity that is incapable of functioning seems nonsensical. For years, this illusion has been used as an excuse to justify various irrational government actions such as excessive spending, seemingly pointless and haphazard wars, and gross oppositions to basic common sense through various policies. However, there is one factor which largely contradicts this supposition of an incompetent government. That is, the elitists of the country have consistently become excessively more wealthy over the years without missing a single beat despite of any supposed "mistakes" by government. But why is this relevant?

If we have been responsible in keeping up with current events with regard to media and government partnerships, we will know that to a large degree, nearly all of the corporate media establishment is owned by the same six financial heads. These are GE, News Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS. This means that despite the apparent variety of sources the mainstream media offers, all of the MSM is collectively working toward the advantage of these six companies. After all, it would not make sense for any single financial entity to oppose itself.

This is why we see national and local news parroting the same scripted information on a daily basis. This is not necessarily because the narratives these companies sell are true, but because certain narratives have been found to be the most profitable for the heads of these companies.

On another note, we already know how common lobbying (a.k.a., euphemised bribery) are in the United States. Over the years, this act of bribery has been so common that it is no longer considered a crime, but is, instead, written into the code of conduct as a normal mode of operation for members of congress and other government bodies.

The presence of this apparent bribery is concerning. However, according to research, lobbying is not at all the only way by which government interests are compromised by big business and the elite.

Naturally, large corporations work toward their own financial advantage. Many times, laws and regulations prevent these corporations from doing that which is most profitable for them. Consequently, it becomes advantageous for these corporations to compromise as many public officials as possible in order to allow them to break laws without facing any penalties for their violations.

All of this has taken place under the radar. While the general public is kept asleep and oblivious to the deep, dark undertakings behind the veneer of government prestige, corrupt and dangerous interests have been creating a world of self-sustenance and preservation for themselves at the expense of everyone else.

This elitist manipulation of government has been the status quo for decades. However, these underhanded dealings have been exposed and largely hindered in the past year or two.

Operating above this game of political corruption is a world of military and corporate partnership which has been claimed to function completely detached from any governmental and civil oversight. These operations have been described by whistleblowers as having advanced technological capability, medical developments, and even futuristic off-planet projects which stretch far beyond the bounds of what the general public believes is possible.

According to numerous whistleblowers—all having different backgrounds and yet still having nearly the same testimony as to the reality behind this secrecy—the so called Military Industrial Complex is considered by most of government to be more important than the general public. This is why the public is taxed so heavily without being allowed to know where their hard-earned wages are going, according to testimony.

This is the reason why past budgets and reports on government spending have seemed so ridiculous. When government interests claim that they do not know where various expenditures were allocated, they may be telling the truth—though it would be a half-truth. According to research, many officials know that these lost trillions are going somewhere. They have every reason to question where and why, and yet according to their own testimony, they have never bothered to ask these obvious questions. This makes no sense.

The government secrecy which hides the truth of gargantuan amounts of spending is one of the many concrete points which alternative communities hold as reason to doubt both past and present proponents of government secrecy. There appears to be no reason why any government interest would try to maintain such secrets while giving such lame excuses and then believing that the people would be satisfied with these fallacious substitutions for reasonable answers.

The government—or more accurately, the Military Industrial Complex—has every reason to come clean with regard to their spending. There is little reason to keep such secrets any longer, especially considering the fact that many citizens already realize the gross amounts of dishonesty, corruption, and violent crimes reportedly used to keep these secrets.

Many people believe that the announcement of President Trump's Space Force is the beginning of the disclosure of these secret projects and technology. And due to the extensive amount of evidence I have personally seen, I would have to agree.

In our prior column, Mark and I wrote about $21 trillion in unaccounted government transactions, primarily on defense. The DOD's (Department of Defense) as well as HUD's (Department of Housing and Urban Development) Offices of Inspector General (OIG) reference these transactions as "unsupported journal voucher adjustments." This is polite accounting language for lost, hidden or stolen money. If such "adjustments" were small, it would be one thing. But they totaled some $21 trillion between 1998 and 2015!

The origin of our column was a report, released some nine months ago, by Mark and Catherine Austin Fitts. Catherine is a former (under Bush 1) Assistant Secretary of that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).Billions in unaccounted government transactions ($278.5 billion in 2015 alone!) emanating from HUD originally caught Catherine's attention in 2000 in connection with subsequent responsibilities as lead financial advisor to the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). Catherine was unable to secure an explanation for HUD's lost money and became concerned that something terribly inappropriate might be going on at HUD and DOD and in the related financial marketswithout the public's knowledge. She has remained concerned for years and shared her concern with Professor Skidmore more than a year ago. From then till now, Fitts and Skidmore have repeatedly asked the DOD's OIG to explain why it can't account for trillions in apparent irregular if not illegal outlays. They've received no response whatsoever apart from acknowledging the requests.

Recently, a C-Span video recording came to our attention in which David Norquist, Comptroller of the DOD, offered an explanation to Congressman Walter Jones regarding the nature of the $6.5 trillion in unsupported adjustments for the Army in fiscal year 2015. You can view his testimony here. To summarize, Norquist says that unsupported adjustments are the result of changes in the “property book” that can amount to hundreds of billions of dollars. According to Norquist, since the system that tracks the property book is not integrated with the system that tracks the general fund ledger, large unsupported adjustments are required for reconciliation. Though it is not entirely clear from his testimony, it seems Mr. Norquist is suggesting that changes in the valuation of property and equipment due to depreciation, base closures, equipment becoming obsolete, etc. are leading to enormous undocumentable adjustments.

If we were present at the hearing, we would have asked Mr. Norquist follow-up questions. The report highlighting unsupported adjustments of $6.5 trillion does indeed indicate that $164 billion in undocumentable adjustments were needed to address issues related to “property” (see page 27 of the report). Clearly, $164 billion in adjustments is substantial. Yet there is no indication as to why properties, equipment, etc. required such enormous changes in valuation. Moreover, the $164 billion accounts for less than 2 percent of the $6.5 trillion. Why were an additional $6.3 trillion in unsupported adjustments needed? To our knowledge, there are no public reports with detailed explanations or additional data. Furthermore, the DOD's OIG's failure to respond to reasonable inquiries and Mr. Norquist's clearly inadequate explanation suggests our government accountants can't figure out what's going on when it comes to trillions in "unsupported" outlays/transactions.

Let's recall that this is not simply a matter of boring accounting. Trillions in unaccounted outlays, if that's what's involved here, is trillions of our tax dollars being spent without our knowledge. If that's the case, we're talking about the biggest government financial deception in the history of the country.

While Norquist’s description of the unsupported adjustments is not the only one that has been offered, some evaluation to assess the veracity of this explanation is possible. Consider the case of the Army for which we found $11.5 trillion in unsupported adjustments over the 1998-2015 period. During this time period, authorized general fund Army spending was about $2 trillion. We know from other sources that about 40 percent of the Army’s budget is allocated to personnel costs, and thus was not used for purchasing property, equipment, and the like. For purposes of this exercise, assume that the remaining amount (60 percent of the $2 trillion, or $1.2 trillion) is used to purchase property, equipment, etc., and suppose all of this spending is fully written off at 100 percent. For how many years could the Army write off all non-personnel spending and then call it an unsupported adjustment? Between 1998 and 2015, the Army’s average annual budget was about $118 billion, of which about $71 billion annually was for non-personnel spending. Dividing $11.5 trillion by $71 billion shows that the Army could have fully written off all non-personnel spending for the past 163 years (assuming a stable budget allocation in real terms), and then called it an unsupported adjustment. From this evaluation, it seems that Mr. Norquist’s explanation does not pass the sniff test.

In late May 2018, Skidmore's graduate student at Michigan State University found the most recent report for the DODon the OIG website, It summarizes unsupported adjustments for fiscal year 2017. However, this document differs from all previous reports in that all the numbers relating to the unsupported adjustments were redacted. That is, all the relevant information was blacked out. The report can be accessed here. We believe the redactions are the direct results of our exposing this issue. That exposure was significant. Our prior column went viral with over 129,000 views.

Despite OIG reports showing trillions of undocumented adjustments, Congress continues to appropriate funds without requiring meaningful improvements in transparency and accountability. The Washington Post's motto is Democracy Dies in Darkness. It sure does. It is time for Congress and their audit arm, the General Accountability Office (GAO), to turn on the lights -- to investigate and explain to the American public these massive undocumented adjustments that may be signaling government malfeasance and legal violations on a massive scale. Unlike some countries' founding documents, our Constitution does not countenance losing money, hiding money or stealing money. Indeed, misuse of assets is an impeachable offense.

Discerning the Mystery is a website dedicated to awakening and educating the people to their true potential of mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical growth. It can be difficult work, but if just one person benefits from these efforts, it is entirely worth it. If you enjoy what you read here, please give the post a like and share on social media. Also, if you enjoyed this article, please consider leaving a donation.

Feel free to send us an email and tell us what you think. If you have any suggestions or subjects you would like to see discussed, please let us know.